An Experimental Study On The Role Of Derivational Affixes Input In L2 Learner's Vocabulary Acquisition

Acquisition of derivational affixes is an important criterion for the capability of vocabulary development while input of derivational affixes is a prerequisite condition of derivational affix acquisition. It is widely known that derivational affix is conducive to the acquisition of vocabulary, but it lacks supports of experimental figures.This thesis reports a quasi-experiment exploring the effect of derivational morpheme on vocabulary acquisition and different role of derivational affixes at different proficiency levels. Subjects involved in this study were 90 first year students from computer department and 30 third year English major students in Tai Zhou University. Experiment was divided into two parts. The first part is the comparison between experiment group and control group. For the sake of convenience, students in class 1 would be referred to as the experiment group (with the help of derivational affixes analysis) and students in class 2 would be referred to as the control group (without the help of derivational affixes analysis). One vocabulary test was carried out immediately after teaching derivational affixes. The other was carried out one month later for proving whether derivational morpheme analysis has much more influence in long term. The second part is the comparison between high-proficiency group and low-proficiency group. 30 students from computer department would be referred to as low-proficiency group and 30 third year English major students was referred to as high-proficiency group, and something like retrospection was required to be done in written form by themselves after finishing each item on both vocabulary.All vocabulary tests of 120 subjects were administrated during class time and the response rate was 100 percent. The present study attempts to address the three key research questions as follows:(1) As a strategy in vocabulary acquisition for language learners, is derivational affixes input conducive to the enrichment of vocabulary acquisition?(2) Does the derivational morpheme learning have more far-reaching influence than the traditional rout rehearsal learning?(3) What role do derivational affixes play for L2 learners at different proficiency levels in China?In the quantitative analysis, all the data were run by the powerful software SPSS. The results indicated compared with the traditional rote memory method, derivational affixes analysis do have much influence on vocabulary acquisition in the long and short term. There is a significant difference between experiment group (with the help of derivational affixes analysis) and control group (without the help of derivational affixes analysis). In second part of the test, results showed high proficiency learners performed much better than low proficiency learners in both tests. However, there appeared somewhat complexity and imbalance in the use of derivational morphology despite the higher rate of using it in total for high proficiency learners. According to the analysis errors of derivational affixes in the texts, the author point out the possible causes that lead to errors. At any rate, the results suggested that only by having the knowledge of derivational morphology and the ability to utilize, can we benefit from the derivational affixes input.